Weird Science says think green, but don’t go green (or slouch)

As if bridge-loving bats and the evolutionary impact of the pill weren't weird …

Green products as the new Diet Coke: How humans respond to making choices perceived as ethical or good has been one of the rather unfortunate discoveries in the psychological sciences. If people are reminded of positive choices—shown a diet menu or something similar—they'll tend to behave better. Once they actually make a positive choice, like ordering a diet Coke, they feel like they've done their bit and are licensed for poor behavior. Hence the supersized fries that often accompany the diet soda. Well, apparently, green products have arrived, or at least reached Diet Coke status. "People act more altruistically after mere exposure to green than conventional products," write the authors of a study that will appear in Psychological Science. "However, people act less altruistically and are more likely to cheat and steal after purchasing green products as opposed to conventional products."

Sit up straight when you write that!: A bit more weird psychology. Apparently, slouching will make you less likely to believe positive statements about yourself. On the plus side, it makes you less likely to believe negative ones, too. Researchers instructed subjects to sit up straight or slouch as they listed positive or negative qualities about themselves. A short while later, a test suggested that the subjects felt more confidence in what they wrote, both positive and negative, if they had been sitting up straight.

Scientific publishing weirdness:This paper didn't strike me as weird so much as completely bonkers, given its opening sentence: "I reject the Darwinian assumption that larvae and their adults evolved from a single common ancestor." It forwarded the proposal that the difference between larval and adult forms of insects—between caterpillars and butterflies, to give one example—arose because insects are the product of a hybridization event between a caterpillar-like organism and something that looked like the adult. The two different forms represent what once were two different species. There's no evidence for this, and any number of reasons to indicate it's wrong. The person who wrote the article is retired after having pushed similar ideas for decades; he's apparently so poorly read on the subject that he doesn't realize that there's already data that addresses the test of his proposal that he puts forward (and shows that he's wrong).

But things apparently get weirder still when you look at the history of the paper. Members of the National Academies of Science are able to shepherd papers through the review process at its Proceedings journal (a practice that will end next year), which is the only reason this got through. The member in this case is Lynn Margulis, who got into the NAS because of her endosymbiosis hypothesis for the origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts. But since then she's been suggesting hybridization and endosymbiosis as the explanation for just about anything in biology, whether the data support it or not. The paper looks to be her way of thumbing her nose at a scientific club that would have her as a member, as she hand-picked a group of equally disgruntled reviewers (choice quote from one: "I'm willing to lower that bar.").

Things have now descended into chaos. PNAS is refusing to put the paper, which is available online, in one of its print editions, and its editor is sitting on other papers from Margulis while awaiting an explanation for what happened here.

Living under an overpass is good for you (if you're a bat): Humans may be disrupting ecosystems left and right, but the changes they bring about sometimes create winners, as well as losers, among the ecosystem's inhabitants. Apparently, when it comes to nesting environments, bats can sometimes come out as winners. "Based on putative stress-related conditions (noise from vehicular traffic, chemical pollutants and a modified social environment) present at bridges, we predicted that bats at these sites would have reduced reproductive success," the authors write. But those expectations did not survive contact with the data: "Contrary to our prediction, pups born at a bridge site were on average heavier and larger at birth and grew faster than those born at a cave site."

Artificial selection, via the pill: The human menstrual cycle is a powerful thing. Various studies have suggested it influences mate choice, as men find women who are on the verge of ovulation more attractive, while women who are ovulating prefer men who impartial subjects rate as more masculine. But a funny thing has happened in modern society: a substantial portion of women no longer ovulate because they're on the pill. The authors of a recent review discuss some evidence that the sorts of shifts that normally occur upon ovulation don't happen when women are on the pill, and consider what that might mean for the formation of relationships that eventually go on to produce offspring.

I got very puzzled when I jump-skimmed into the abstract and saw, "To accomplish this, in the current study, eggs were sampled from 92 nests over 6 years and analysed along with 22 nests from a previous 2-year study."

I'm fascinated by this ovulation related story. Reading now... Which tracks fertility rates better in a country: availability of electricity, availability higher education for women, or rates of use of hormonal birth control?

Diet Coke with Supersized fries? Are these people trying to delude themselves into feeling better? It's like saying, "I saved lost 5 lbs but gained 20... and I came out ahead!". Just accept the fact that most people don't act altruistically normally anyway, and this makes perfect sense why they act that way. So they try to make themselves "feel" better (but really don't make any impact whatsoever), which is just selfish.

Well color affect the psychology and its common and everyone knows I guess. In mind sciences it has been explored since long time. Blue is for Happiness, Red is Unhappiness / Disappointments / Anger, Yellow is sadness and green is for disturbed color.

@stiefel: This sentence (from the study's abstract) is poorly worded… "People act more altruistically after mere exposure to green than conventional products"… it refers to products perceived as environmentally friendly, not the mere color green.

Originally posted by bartfat:Diet Coke with Supersized fries? Are these people trying to delude themselves into feeling better? It's like saying, "I saved lost 5 lbs but gained 20... and I came out ahead!". Just accept the fact that most people don't act altruistically normally anyway, and this makes perfect sense why they act that way. So they try to make themselves "feel" better (but really don't make any impact whatsoever), which is just selfish.

How about nobody acts altruistically ever? Ok, I won't say nobody ever, but "real" altruism hardly exists. For instance, if what you're doing is pretty much mandated to you by a "higher power", that's not altruism. If what you're doing helps others, but makes YOU feel good about yourself, I would argue that it's not really altruistic either.

How is it exceptionally selfish to delude yourself into thinking you're making good choices for yourself? It doesn't effect anyone else other than your self.

RicoIf what you're doing helps others, but makes YOU feel good about yourself, I would argue that it's not really altruistic either.

I fucking hate this bullshit argument.

When it comes down to it, if the acts of one person help others, and the acts of another do not, the fact that it made the first person feel better doesn't diminish their actions one bit. So what if they were both "selfish". As and equally "selfish" member of society, damn straight that I am going to laud "selfish" people that benefit society, while looking down on genuinely selfish people whose actions don't.

They can try and justify themselves with their talk of "no-one is altruistic anyway" all they want, but the fact is that I value people that help others more than those that don't and will absolutely treat these two different.

Edit: Sorry, re-reading you post, I see my rant was a bit off tangent. It just hit a sore spot.